Homemade corn soup

This morning I had a dream about my favourite corn soup that my grandma used to make. It's not as tasty as those served in restaurants but whenever I returned to Indonesia every twice a year for holidays, my grandma never failed to make me a whole pot of it. I remembered how i never failed to gobble down at least half of it too! My grandma took it personally when the soup didn't turn out as good as she hoped it to be, and she said cooking corn soup is like lottery to her, it takes a bit of luck and chances everytime. Lol~ The thoughts and efforts that she put into the corn soup made it the most delicious corn soup that I would no longer be able to taste. During her funeral, my dad was even saying to me "Grandma's gone... no one's going to cook corn soup for you anymore". The pain of losing her is still tearing all of us apart now. I hope she's all well up there.

Anyway, I tried to recreate the corn soup using the recipes and ingredients that my grandma used, except that I'm using pure chicken broth and adding shredded chicken slices to my soup. It tastes quite good, except that the appearance didn't seem to be as tempting because I don't have a strainer to pour the eggs through at the last step. I think I've added too much vermicilli too. The soup turns out to be:


... a really THICK corn soup! Lol~ Next time i'll cut down on the vermicilli and corn starch :)

I guess my attempt to recreate grandma's corn soup didn't succeed. It's indeed irreplaceable. Grandma, please come visit us in our dreams and serve us some corn soup ok? Teehee~

Sasa shopping haul

The items that I have ordered from sasa has FINALLY arrived!! They were ordered on 18 April, and since me and my friends managed to buy more than $75, we got free shipping for our items! Yay~ As much as we were happy for the free shipping, we started to get tired of the extremely long delay in the shipping time. If we could have got our items much sooner without free shipping, I would rather have paid for it (￣^￣)�

- Cyber colors Eye Makeup remover
- Cyber colors Defined liquid eye liner
- Somang Keratin Hair pack Silk Protein
- Lucky loose curler
- Vitacreme B12 Regenerative cream
- Dr. Wu Perfect Cover blemish balm cream

Can't wait to try them out!!

GDragon cuteness

GDragon cuteness overload!!! I would like to purchase the whole set please!!!!

Home-made Bi Bim Bab

Home-made Bi Bim Bab prepared by my friend's sister. She's also prepared this dish 2 years ago and I still remembered it was fried eggs back then. This time, she poached the eggs instead. I'm still amazed at how beautiful her poached eggs always turn out. I shall master poached eggs one day!! *motivated*

The Korean dish above is simply a combination of cooked spinach, mushroom, raw carrots, cucumber, sliced chicken, some kim chi and Bi Bim sauce from the supermarket & of course top it off with your favourite eggs!

On a side note, the extremely lack of updates on this blog is mostly due to the convenience of twitter & the pretty features of instagram, as well as other wonderful apps that app developers out there have successfully captured all of us apple iphone fanatics. Will definitely try to update more often now, seeing as how my english levels have dropped drastically....

Taiwanese style porridge & dumplings

Taiwanese-style porridge & boiled dumplings for dinner tonight. Simple & delicious~ It's a very good way of cooking up a delicious meal using leftover rice!

Haven't blogged for a long while now. And since my writing skill isn't very good, i'll let pictures do the talking :) I hope I'll get iPhone4 soon so that i'll be able to take more photos using its 5megapixels camera (i'm currently using my sis' Nokia e71 3.2 megapixel camera =.=).

Exploring Eastwood

I haven't been cooking lately, which means I need to eat-out during my lunch breaks at work. Instead of choosing 1 of the countless korean restaurants along the west side of Eastwood (where the office is located), I decided to explore google map to check out other restaurants in the east side of Eastwood. I decided to try this restaurant in the end:


It's around 12 minutes walk from my office to this restaurant. It's famous for its ramen, so I ordered Teriyaki chicken ramen $12.80.



There wasn't plenty of light in where I was sitting, so pls pardon the poor quality photo. In fact, is it just me or does it look like i've got soap bubbles in the ramen? lol~ Got my ramen within 10 minutes, a little longer than wht other japanese restaurants would normally take to serve out their dishes, but it's rather reasonable. But I soon realised that most of the online reviews were right: the food tastes good.... but they took ages to serve the dishes!! 2 middle-aged ladies at the next table had already finished their ramen before their gyoza was being served to them!! (=_=)

Eastwood town centre:


It's my first time exploring the east side of Eastwood... only to find that it's so much more developed than the side of eastwood where my office is located!! I didn't go into the small shopping centre but I caught a glimpse of woolworths and bing lee. The top 4 banks are also located in this town centre too! I couldn't resist a cold drink on a hot day, so I grabbed Easyway on my way back to the office :P

Railway tracks @ Eastwood station:


I can't wait to go back to the town centre again the next time I don't bring my lunch to work :P

On a separate occasion, I had this Nasi lemak from Jimmy's recipe @ TGV:


Personally, i think it could've tasted better. Huge mountain of rice, but they could've given more curry sauce and other stuffs at the side. Perhaps their Laksa are more yummy.

Korean grape candy that i've been looking for:


Somehow, i didn't enjoy eating it as much as before because it leaves an after-taste that makes me thirsty all the time.

Randoms

Sydney sky last week: massive cloud & rain on the left side of the picture, and clear blue sky on the right. The Spring season in Sydney has not officially arrived yet, with gale force wind weather warning issued for several days. The weather this week has turned for the better, but the wind and chill sometimes keep me hibernating at home.


Wesley Fair'09 in Pitt St on 8th October:

It was really packed and all sorts of merchandises were on sale. I was volunteering in the kids' entertainment department, where I learned how to make a dog-shaped balloon :)

The garlic I planted around a month ago:


Few mins ago as I tried to log in to twitter, this appeared:


This "Fail whale" was created by Yiying Lu who was featured in 7th October edition of the Central magazine (click here). I've been wanting to see it "live", so I couldn't resist taking a screen cap of it :p

Happy Birthday Dad!

When I came across this card design on Etsy, I seeked my sis' opinion and purchased it right away. This card managed to describe my dad best since he is working in the fashion industry. His obsession with fancy clothings, jeans, bags and shoes and his awesome attention to details has undoubtedly made fashion industry the right field of job for him. Of course there are many more things that he would love to try doing... if only he has the time to. And having been working to support his family ever since he was 12, he probably didn't have any options to explore his interests at all. I hope that one day i would be able to shoulder some of his burdens, so that he'll get to experience many more wonderful and great things out there that, thanks to him, I have been fortunate enough to experience them myself. Without him, I wouldn't be here and I wouldn't be whoever I am today. Happy Birthday Dad!!! Love you always!

Sunset

This photo was taken while I was walking towards the South Juniors community club across the road together with my housemate. It was nearly forming the colours of the rainbow but I couldn't capture it with my phone camera. I hope one day I would be able to enjoy the scene of sunrise + sunset from the beach.

I went to check out the gym and swimming pool in the community club. After so many years of procrastination, I think i'll finally sign up for a gym membership lol~ (though procrastination hasn't ended yet since i haven't actually signed up for it). Looking at so many people exercising in the gym made me feel so fat and inactive. In one day, i've probably moved less muscles than even handicapped people LOL~ I hope Ms.paperplanes & my other housemate (Ms.E) would sign up for the gym membership as well...so that I will be more motivated to go to the gym =P

Wheat bag for the cold winter

Just when i thought winter has ended and the sun has been shining brightly, the past few nights proved me wrong. I have already returned my heater to the landlord and without access to anything warmer than two layers of quilt, i decided to make myself a wheat bag. A certain nature of wheat makes it a good retainer of heat and cold, making it a perfect heat pad for sore neck/muscle and cold pad for bruises. I came across so many cute wheat bags online together with their free patterns, but since i don't have a sewing machine, I could only come up with a very simple wheat bag: a knee-high sock (perfectly brand new) filled with organic wheat and english rose pot pourri!

To prevent the wheat from forming a big bulge at one end when i filled up the sock, I divided the sock into 4 compartments and sew a horizontal line across the black stripes (to conceal my poor sewing skills) after each 1/4 of the sock has been filled. Next, put it into the microwave and heat it up for 3 minutes together with a cup water to prevent the wheat from drying up. Voila! A scented wheat bag perfect for the cold nights!!


When I can get my hands on some fancy cloths, I will definitely make more of this!!! One thing to note: never leave it in the microwave oven unsupervised and 4 minutes maximum. Longer than 4 minutes might make the wheat bag too hot for comfort.